One of the most pressing problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina is human trafficking. This was recently confirmed by a case from Kalesija, when the sale of a girl, i.e. an arranged marriage, was prevented. The local community reacted in a timely manner, but this case shows how necessary the protection of children is in BiH, that is, that children are still very vulnerable here.
A few days ago, the public of Bosnia and Herzegovina was appalled and worried when they saw that the parents of a thirteen-year-old girl from Kalesija arranged a marriage with a fifty-year-old man from Serbia. Her parents withdrew the girl from school in order to sell her, and she, dressed in a wedding dress, was not even aware that she was a victim of human trafficking. The director of the Center for Social Work told BHT1 how the girl was rescued from the wedding procession that was on the way out of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“I was personally there with my on-duty social worker. There were members of the police department, who I must say, acted very professionally. We stopped a wedding convoy of seven cars, three cars had Serbian license plates. We are like a guardianship authority found a little girl in one of the cars. We identified her as a thirteen-year-old girl who had a veil on her head and a wedding dress on. We took the little girl out, and the participants were taken to the police department,” says Muhamed Majdancic, director of the Kalesija Center for Social Work.
All those who participated in the attempt to sell and buy the girl have been identified and certain measures will be taken against them. The little girl is in a safe place, protected. This case showed how the local community can act successfully when it respects the adopted action plan and protocol on dealing with cases of child exploitation.
“That event really shouldn’t have happened, but we did everything as the Municipality of Kalesija, headed by the mayor and the Center for Social Work, and took all measures and actions with poise. So that attempt was prevented and the worst did not happen,”Meho Tursunbegovic, the secretary of Kalesija Municipality, added.
In the first four months of this year alone, mobile teams in Tuzla and Sarajevo recorded and found 208 adults and children begging, of which five children were identified as potential victims of human trafficking and moved to safety. In the Children’s Land Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they face the problem of human trafficking every day and take children from the streets to the day care center.
“We are facing a situation where children in our country are not sufficiently protected from the system and very easily become targets and victims of human traffickers.”
An invisible and increasingly present problem is that there are numerous underage marriages in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where children, or girls, are sold for money. Only when a case like this in Kalesija happens, do we realize that the problem is in our backyard, not far away from us. Therefore, society has a great responsibility, because when it comes to children, we must not turn a blind eye.
